Just Breathe
by witchinghour
Summary: Mostly non-fandom: an inside look at the mind of the victim of a serial killer. No names; use your imagination. VERY DARK! Not meant for children, and this internal glimpse may be disturbing to some, so use your own discretion.


A/N: I got bitten by a random, scary-dark plot bunny while perusing the internet. I wrote it simply to get it out of my head, not expecting it to get read, so props if you read it! This is a VERY DARK piece. Not for the faint of heart - it's pretty darn creepy even to me, and I wrote it. It started a lot happier, I swear! That lasted, oh, the first two words or so...

It's turned into an insight not on the serial killer, but the victim; it's meant to be an inside look into the mind of the victim, kidnapped and tortured beyond endurance. It's meant to be a one-shot - it may be continued, but it's not likely, and if it is it will be a CSI piece. Right now, it's non-fandom related. Continuation is more likely with positive feedback, but still not likely. That being said, I love feedback - live for it - and good reviews or constructive criticism is welcome. Flames will be passed around amongst my friends and laughed at, then used to roast marshmallows.

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**_Just Breathe_**

Just breathe.

The water is dripping idly down the walls and you follow the clean trail it makes through the dirt with your eyes. You can't imagine how something so impossibly pure as that crystal drop of water can exist down here, in the filth of the tiny dungeon that imprisons death itself within cardboard walls of sheer terror.

Just breathe.

You wiggle your feet, just a little, but still them immediately when the guard walks by, thinking - praying - that if you just stay still enough, they'll think you're dead. He continues without pause, and you slump with a sigh, thinking that today is not your day. You're not sure whether the sigh is relief...or despair.

Just breathe.

If you could get to that wall, you'd drink every drop of water that crawled down through that disgusting waste, but the chains are far too secure. You would know - you tried everything to get free those first few days, when you thought, naively, that freedom existed for you outside of death. You know the truth, now, and you find you miss the lie.

Just breathe.

Outside these dirty walls, the world moves on without missing a beat, not even noticing you're gone. You think you miss those careless days, but it's been so long now that you aren't even sure you remember enough of them to miss.

Just breathe.

You look at the marks you've made with your ragged fingernails through the dirt on the walls, just inside your field of vision. There are four, but surely you've been here longer than four days. Surely.

Just breathe.

Around the room, you can vaguely see marks similar to your own, in varying degrees of reaccumulating dirt. The highest number is fourteen, but you know you can't last ten more days in here, don't understand how anyone could last ten more days in here. The red tint to those marks is much heavier than that which your own bear, thus far. You wonder if soon your marks will bear such heavy stains, and hope you'll be dead before they do.

Just breathe.

Sometimes you think you've gone crazy, that the guard that comes by every few hours - you think it's only hours - is a figment of your imagination, that the man is a nightmare and if you could only pinch yourself you'd wake up and be crazy, because crazy is better than here. But you're never allowed the freedom of movement to pinch yourself, and maybe that's the point - to keep you trapped in this nightmare forever. You think that maybe dead is even better than crazy.

Just breathe.

More footsteps, lighter this time, and you wish you were deaf so you didn't have to feel the overwhelming terror those footsteps bring with them. You wonder if you'll bleed today. You never knew there were so many ways to cause pain that didn't involve any blood at all, and God how you wish you didn't know.

Just breathe.

You close your eyes again, unable to allow yourself to see that face, the one you couldn't stop looking at that first day, the one that you thought you'd remember forever. You only see his eyes, now, those horrible, empty eyes, and you know that if you open yours again to see him, you'll fall into them and never come back out, and you'd so much rather die than that. The door creaks as he enters, and you know it's him though you still won't open your eyes. He smells of smoke, and you force yourself to stay still, not to quiver in terror, knowing that today will be so much worse than bleeding.

Just breathe.

They're not coming, you know that as you twitch and dangle and scream in silence, through a bloody wreck of a throat that was once your own. Only your mind is you own now, and really not even that, and oh, God, they're not coming and you know you'll die down here and it hurts and oh please let me die let me die and then there are footsteps, running, getting louder, and they came. They really came, and they're here, and you're not dead. You can't be dead because dead can't hurt this much and they really came. They came they came and everything will be all right even if maybe you're still praying to die before the good dream ends and the footsteps go away. But they don't go, and you won't die, and then you see...

Just breathe.


End file.
